Carolyn Melton met her sweetheart at ECU, they married, took jobs as teachers in Lenoir County and now volunteer at Lenoir Memorial Hospital.

The Burlington native started taking courses leading to teacher certification in Greenville right after high school. Robert Melton of Richlands was going through the same program.

After they graduated in 1976, they began searching for a place where both of them could teach.

“It was a matter of where we could get the best package deal for jobs,” she said.

When they landed on two teaching positions in La Grange, they moved to Kinston. Carolyn Melton taught kindergartners for 30 years at La Grange Elementary.

“Same school, same age,” Carolyn Melton said. “I was blessed.”

Through the federal Reading First grant, she continued three-plus years, working fulltime assisting teachers in reading with K-3 students. She retired in August 2010.

Robert Melton taught fifth- and sixth-graders at E.B. Frink before and after it became a middle school, coached girls volleyball and basketball and was named athletic director.

His old-school mother headed him in the direction of teaching — German-style, he said. However, it proved to be the right direction for him.

“I loved teaching,” he said.

Carolyn Melton knew teaching was her career choice when she was assigned to an open K-2 classroom when she was a high school student.

“I got to have hands-on experience, and found that I really enjoyed it, and I seemed to be able to relate to children,” she said.

After her husband retired in January 2011, the couple frequently spent time at their beach house. But after a while, the formerly busy couple needed something more to do.

That’s when they decided to volunteer at LMH.

“We just started here,” Carolyn Melton said at the service desk of the Day Surgery unit. “I felt it would be a good fit for my husband.”

Robert Melton volunteers at the service desk near the front lobby where he has plenty of interaction with people. He admits patients, wheels them to their room, provides information to the patients and their families and takes them back when it’s time for them to check out.

Working with a team of women, his role is all about easing patients and family members’ fears and making them feel comfortable.

“It’s very rewarding at the end of the day to be able to help or assist someone,” he said.

His wife has a different role.

“I’m more of a person that can manage the desk by myself — a different environment,” she said.

Like her husband, though, Carolyn Melton’s job involves meeting and greeting patients and families in Day Surgery.

“Many times, we’re the first face people see as they come in,” she said. “I just try to reassure them, answer questions (and) tell them what the procedure is going to be.”

She may, at times, escort them to another part of the hospital. But much of her job involves clerical work.

Melton is part of the LMH Volunteer Leadership Team as projects chairwoman. She handles fundraisers that support the patient experience, such as adding televisions in some of the patient rooms and a communication system for the Emergency Department.

She also solicits vendors to stock the Cheer Corner, the hospital’s gift shop.

Melton said she has donated about 1,000 hours to LMH, and fundraisers contributed more than $164,300 in 2013. She has carried her enthusiasm of teaching children into her current role of helping people.

“A lot of the self-satisfaction,” she said, “is that I’m doing something in a positive manner that is helping someone else. You don’t get that sitting at home.”

Melton encourages others to check out the LMH Volunteers Facebook site and consider volunteering. For information, call Ann Durusky at 252-522-7006.